I didn't think about the 2x speed rewards, so you are right in that this could be a reason behind the growth.  It is odd that people would run Dragon 25 specifically just for speed sets though, because from an energy and time point of view, generally people stick with Dragon 20, 21 or 22.  The chances of rewards are similar.  

That said, there was another spike in Dragon runs again in the last 24 hours, with it gaining another 1 million, but the 2x speed event would have been over completely by now.  The event ran from 23rd Jul to 26th July UTC, and while yesterday might have been on the border (it was 27th UTC when I got the figures), today is currently 28th UTC.

The other theory is that the reported figures online are 24 hours out of date.  This would explain why some of the spikes with Spider took place after fragment of CvC events had finished.

Currently there is a 2x Retaliation set for Ice Golem.  Wonder if we will start to see that spike up soon.  I doubt though

i

Lol @ "spike in IG"

If we do see a significant spike in IG, I think the creative accounting you alluded too in an earlier post would be a reasonable conclusion. 

The goal for IG is significantly lower than the other dungeons though, so even a mild interest would have a relatively high impact.

On that note, pretty revealing that it's 1/5th of FK and 1/15th of Dragon. Says something about how useful the sets are perceived.

With Reflex gaining in popularity, I could see IG getting a boost assuming the baselines are based off older data.  But IG25 is probably the most difficult of the 25s...

Retaliation is very underrated too.

You find IG25 worse than FK25?

I find IG 25 terrible to auto, at least without a really careful tuning or specific strategies like poison explosion (which I don't have). I can do it, and I have, but more often than I'd like the AI does something stupid that triggers multiple counter attacks with double minions up and my team gets wiped. I've had it happen even on 20, though infrequently enough that it's not really a problem.

Way worse, I can 100% slow kill 25... like 4 to 5 minutes.   But I can't get anything faster without chancing fail. If it's not 100pct then 25 isn't better than 20 imo.   And I just solo 20 with tyrant anyway.

Fk is easy with a seer team plus alure, boss never gets a turn.  And I'm certain people have much faster fk speed farm teams, I just don't bother since I am not racing for tournament wins ever.

Yeah, that is one of the issues for sure. :(

FK25 is super easy with Alure for sure. I literally just pulled her pretty recently, so FK 25 was absolutely terrible before this for me. I farmed a TON of FK20 tbh.

With Alure I was able to build a team that is in the 1:15-1:30 range, which is good enough for me.

Reflex in Hydra, I presume?

Where are you using Retal?

11 days in and Dragon is still moving at the increased pace that it has been these past couple of days.  I have changed it to orange purely because at the 6% increase, it is now within range of being on track, assuming it stays this way.  I still have no idea what is driving this growth though, since there is no active Dragon event on that I am aware of

The other events growth remains consistent so far with all previous days.  Ice Golem has also not improved with the current 2x, but this is not unsurprising.

i

12 Days in and Dragon continues to jump up by about 6%.  Assuming it's not dodgy numbers, I can only guess that people choose to run Dragon when no events are on, but the fact that they are running Dragon 25 is difficult to beleive.  In any event, if it continues at the 6% pace then tomorrow it will likely be green, as it will be back in line with where we need to be

All other events are going slow, including Spider, so nothing material to report out of those

i

13 days in and the Dragon train has stopped.  Whatever phantom process was driving the growth in this goal has come back down to the same pace as the remaining.  At present, all events are going at the same slow pace

i

major problem of this event are rewards, which are worthless in comparisson to amount of time we have to spent on it :D

14 days in, and I've added a new column that shows the % increase since my last update, as I think this will help show which events are moving faster each day

Fire Knight is the one today that has picked up pace, gaining almost 7% since the last update.  There's a 2x Savage event on which might be driving it, but again it is interesting to think that people actually run stage 25 to get the rewards.  Still, of any of the sets out there, savage is the one that most end game players are looking for, so it does make sense in some way.

The other observation is that the trials themselves are not enough to urge players to consume content.  Other events are still the main driving force (e.g. 2x item events, or tournaments).  In other words, simply having the summer trials going would not actually result in a lot of players running stage 25 of a dungeon.  The rewards are simply not good enough.

It's also worth noting that Spider is fast approaching the stage where it will no longer be green, assuming it maintains the current pace.  Tomorrow the expected completion % will be about 48%, and then the next will be about 52%.  Assuming a 1% completion each day, this means in 2 days it'll be exactly at target, and by 3 days it'll be behind.

The new fragment/fusion event starts soon which might drive some growth though, so will be interesting to see that.  It won't be for all events though, as Tag Team Arena, Hydra, Demon Lord and Faction Crypts are not part of any fragment/fusion run.  Also, the champion seems to be quite subpar, plus the event is more difficult, so it is possible that not as many people will gun for it compared to other ones.  

I had kind of hoped that Plarium would have used this fragment/fusion event as a potential lever to drive growth in the trials, but they aren't helping themselves by how they have structured it

i

CvC tomorrow. Some strategic 2x CvC points rewards for dungeons might provide some incentive for running dungeons 25.

I think Plarium have a totally blinkered view of the TAG arena which would explain low takeup, it's fine and easy enough at lower levels but more and more players are stuck on the get to Gold one mission, I'm in S4 and because of the format can quite easily stay there doing minimal battles each week, I suspect that this is what a large percentage of S4 and above in gold do each week - enough to stay in their tier - yes I sometimes do more battles  testing team compositions  but I don't want to test too much as I don't want to lose too many points, and sometimes I win two battles, lose one and gain four points whereas the other way around I can lose 13 points

IMO if you want more TAG involvement make promotion the same as classic - having an arbitary figure each week that you may or may not advance with is really frustrating, especially if you are 'green' when you log off for the night and find you got bumped out during your night

But mostly people waiting the fusion and dont want to burning out their resources.

Other fact, this summer trial is too short i think. Player base not equal with players who can complete stage 25s. Mostly goal wont be complete because this.

15 days in and we are halfway there.

Fire Knight continues to grow by 10% much like yesterday, which I still assume is on the back of the Savage set increase drop rate.  This set drop rate has 13 hours by the time I posted this, so I expect it'll be around another 10% growth by tomorrow as well.  If there really is a 24 hour lag in reporting numbers, then we could even get 2 more days of 10% growths, but regardless it'll still be behind where it needs to be.

The rest of the goals are still growing at their slow pace.  Spider will likely break even in the next day or 2

There's a lot to make up for in the last half of this event, but it is clear that certain goals are simply never going to make it.  The coveted Leggo book in Tag Team Arena is all but a dream at the moment, as is the XP Barrel from Hydra, though I am not sure many care about the latter.  The 5 star Chicken from Ice Golem though will be missed

i

Time to start some conspiracy theories!  A few jumps in the last 24 hours

The first one to call out is Ice Golem, which has jumped up 6.7% since yesterday.  It has gone from 135,000 runs to over 200,000, which is a massive gain for this duration.  To put it another way, it took 15 days for it to reach 135,000, and then in 1 day it gained 65,000.  The bigger question is why.  There's been a 2x Savage event on for Fire Knight these past couple of days which has now finished, so there wasn't a bonus for Ice Golem.  The only thing I can think of is that it is CvC related, but I don't participate in that so cannot tell what rewards are in there.

In any event, I'd be happy if we can get Ice Golem across the line.  Always keen for another 5 star chicken.

The second jump is still Fire Knight, gaining an additional 14% in the last 24 hours.  I assume it is still the Savage Set that just finished which was driving it, but it could also be CvC related.  Will be interesting to see if this continues, and if it does then we can look forward to our 50 XP Brews.

Spider has started to see a surge again, and this I assume is on the back of CvC.  At almost 62% complete, I think Spider will finish quite well before the end of these trials.  CvC will drive it's growth up for the next couple of days, and even if that doesn't finish it then the fragment/fusion event will likely seal the deal

Edit: It is worth noting that there is still the Kael skin tournament on Dragon, for Rares only.  I assume there's some people gunning for this, but as expected it is having no impact on the growth numbers for Dragon in these trails.  

All other events have low growth, which is consistent with previous days.

i